Brewers Baseball 1970 Season Hitting

 

The first year of Brewers baseball in 1970 was interesting to say the least. Leaving Spring Training and not knowing whether or not they would be playing a sophomore season in Seattle or head east to Milwaukee or they would all become free agents. On April 1, the moving trucks spent the night in Las Vegas and awaited word on which way they would be going. Later in the week the trucks spent two days in Provo Utah, still waiting word. Finally Milwaukee car salesman Bud Selig and a team of investors came through to bring the Pilots east. They spent the season in the AL west, and finished 65-97 and 1. The Brewers finished 33 games behind the first place Twins. But 5 years after the Braves left for Atlanta, MLB had come back to Milwaukee. Selig was a major factor in that move. Bud had been a minority owner in the Braves, and had, unsuccessfully, lobbied to keep the team in brew town. Selig was like many young men and had fallen in love with the game early on. Heartbroken and devastated at the move he was able arrange several exhibition games and several White Sox home games in the 4 years in between. And initially Selig was focused on the White Sox, that is, until MLB put the kibosh on it and then the Pilots fell to him. The top offensive player in 1970 was Tommy Harper. Harp led the Brewers in AB, Runs, Hits, Doubles, HR, RBI, BB, SB's Caught Stealing and batting average.  Harper, became the first Brewer to take an at bat, on April 7th. He grounded out to third base, in that first at bat. Harper had arguably he best season that year becoming the first Brewer, and 5th player over all to join the 30 HR/30 SB club. And the lone Brewer in the club til Ryan Braun in 2011. Harper finish in the top 10 in MVP voting that year and was his only ALL STAR appearance.

Pictured above in his 1970 Topps Super issue Card #9. Beckett value at the time was 2.00. His most valuable 1970 issue was the Chemtoy Superball #245 booking at 6.00

Harper would spend 1971 with the Brewers as well, and was traded to the Red Sox during the off season.

Comments

  1. rlschlesMay 10, 2021 at 8:42 PM

    I think of Harper as a Cincinnati Red. Did he start out there?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction

Image
 Back in 1994 I started my obsession with baseball video games, when in late spring of that year I picked up my copy of Sega's World Series Baseball off of layaway at the Kmart store that I worked at. A few years earlier some of my dorm mates at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, MT, had wasted countless hours playing Sports Talk Baseball and Football, but this was the start of what continues to this day.  Living in and growing up in MN of course my brother and I were Twins fans, and so setting up the season of course we picked the Twins. (Once we figured out that we could only play one season at a time, we decided to each play every other game.) By 1994 I had pretty much stopped collecting cards, until... we started getting boxes, at work, from a company in Texas called "Vintage Sports Cards" And what they were was basically full boxes of Junk wax era cards that ranged anywhere from 10 bucks up to 30 bucks depending on brand. Some of the boxes I picked up included 1988
Read more

1971 Brewers Hitters

Image
 The second year of Brewers baseball wasn't much better that the first. In 1971 the Crew ran 28 position players out trying to find the right combo again to try and be more competitive in the American League West. They would move to their familiar home in  AL East in 1972. Among those making their crew debut in 1971 were Darrell Porter, Jose Cardenal, and Dick Schofield, who ended up retiring at the end of the season. The star, though, turned out to be Dave May. May became a consistent performer for the Brewers after coming over in a trade with the Baltimore Orioles. He led the team in RBI, Reached on Error 12, grounded into 18 double plays, and hit a team leading .277. He later became the player that brought Hank Aaron back to Milwaukee. He would return to the Crew as they pushed for a division title in 1978.  May spent a total of 12 years in the majors and after retiring in 1978 spent a couple years in the Braves system as a roving hitting instructor in 81 and 82.  He passed away
Read more